What We Do

The Center for Effectiveness & Safety Research aims to leverage Kaiser Permanente’s seven regional research centers and its national and regional operational analytical groups to improve the health and well-being of our members and the public. The center does this by assembling teams to compare how well and how safely different preventive services and treatment approaches work, including prescription medications, devices, surgical procedures, vaccines, and ways of organizing health care.

The main data source for the center’s work is Kaiser Permanente Research's Virtual Data Warehouse, which organizes data from each region in a common format with standard variable definitions. The data warehouse includes historical as well as current data from Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect®, the current electronic health record system. The data warehouse, built originally through a series of federal grants, enables Kaiser Permanente researchers to work more efficiently on inter-regional studies. The center invests a significant portion of its annual budget in the maintenance and expansion of this resource and relies on its Data Coordinating Center, headquartered at the Center for Health Research Northwest, for overall management of this asset.

The Center for Effectiveness & Safety Research's work is conducted in five strategic priority areas:

Ensuring Kaiser Permanente Research has access to high-quality
data systems across all regions

Stimulating development of a robust research
knowledge management system

Advancing innovations in comparative effectiveness and safety research
methods